He wasn’t fooling anybody. Aaron Hernandez had somebody – police officers, perhaps? – put a T-shirt over his handcuffs to block at least that part of the image of his public downfall from getting into the visual media.

Those same officers arranged the perp walk in front of Hernandez’s home as they arrested him on still-undisclosed charges related to the murder of a Hernandez associate.

The message sent: No one is above the law, certainly not a football player that we have to assume based on what we know now is at the least a participant in the murder after the fact in helping cover up the crime.

Details have emerged since the news broke that Odin Lloyd’s body had been discovered in a lot about a mile from Hernandez’s home about the now-former New England Patriots tight end’s rough and tumble background.

Coaches at the University of Florida, where Hernandez played his college ball, were said to have been worried every time Hernandez went back home to Connecticut that he would get in trouble given his network of friends with troubled backgrounds.

That has now apparently caught up with Hernandez, who was released by the Patriots shortly after his arrest, though that is clearly the least of his concerns.

The assumption right now is that Hernandez is being arrested on an obstruction of justice charge, but in reading the tea leaves, that charge itself implies that police and prosecutors feel that they have evidence related to the murder of Lloyd that links Hernandez or associates to the crime.

Whether this turns into another Ray Lewis case, where the Baltimore Ravens linebacker was eventually exonerated on charges of involvement in a murder committed by associates of his after a Super Bowl party several years ago, or something more along the lines of O.J. Simpson, remains to be seen.